IETF STEERING GROUP (IESG) REPORT FROM THE TELECONFERENCE February 20th, 1992 Reported by: Greg Vaudreuil, IESG Secretary This report contains - Meeting Agenda - Meeting Attendees - Meeting Notes Please contact the IESG Secretary, Greg Vaudreuil, for more information. ATTENDEES --------- Almquist, Philip / Consultant Borman, David / Cray Research Chiappa, Noel Crocker, Dave / TBO Coya, Steve / CNRI Davin, Chuck / MIT Estrada, Susan / CERFnet Gross, Philip / ANS Hobby, Russ / UC-DAVIS Reynolds, Joyce / ISI Piscitello, Dave/ Bellcore Stockman, Bernard / SUNET/NORDUnet Vaudreuil, Greg / CNRI Regrets Huizer, Erik / SURFnet Hinden, Robert / BBN Crocker, Steve / TIS AGENDA ------- 1.0 Administrivia 1.1 Bash the Agenda 1.2 Approval of the Minutes 1.1.1 December 5th, 1991 1.1.2 December 12th, 1991 1.1.3 January 2nd, 1992 1.1.4 January 23rd, 1992 1.1.5 February 6th, 1992 1.3 Next Meeting 2.0 Review of Action Items 3.0 Protocol Actions 3.1 SMDS to Draft Standard 3.2 822 Message Header Extensions 3.3 Frame Relay MIB 3.4 X.400 88=>84 Downgrading 3.5 Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822 3.6 IP Type of Service 4.0 RFC Editor Actions 4.1 Hybrid NETBIOS End-Nodes 4.2 DCNL to Experimental 5.0 Technical Management Issues 5.1 Interoperability testing at IETF meetings. 5.2 RFC 931 User Authentication Protocol 5.3 Report from the ROAD Group 5.4 IANA and the Class "B" allocation strategy 5.5 Internet Draft Format Requirements "Deplorable Documents" (PG) 5.6 Email Host Requirements 5.7 Working Group Early Warning System 5.8 Report of the Ad Hoc meeting on DNS Security 5.9 IP over FDDI to Draft 5.10 Network Database 6.0 IESG Technical Evolution document. 7.0 Working Group Actions 7.1 Audio/Video Teleconferencing (avt) 7.2 SNMP over Multi-Protocol Internet (mpsnmp) MINUTES -------- 1) Administrivia 1.2 Approval of the Minutes The minutes of the December 5th, 1991, December 12th, 1991, January 2nd, 1992, and January 23rd, 1992 meetings were approved. Approval of the Minutes of the February 6th teleconference was deferred until the next meeting. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Post the minutes for the December 5th, 1991, December 12th, 1991, January 2nd, 1992, January 23rd, 1992, and February 6th, 1992 IESG teleconferences. The IESG discussed the manner in which action items should be recorded in the IESG Minutes. The assignment and conclusion of action items will be recorded in the minutes, but review of action items in progress will not be reported. 1.3 Next Meeting The IESG scheduled a teleconference from 12:00 to 2PM EST Thursday March 5th. 2) Action Items The action items were reviewed by email prior to the meeting. A summary of the action items concluded is enclosed as appendix A. 3) Protocol Actions 3.1 SMDS to Draft Standard (Noel Chiappa) Dave Piscitello related current operational experience of RFC 1209 IP over SMDS service. Documentation of SMDS use is available, and George Clapp is working on documenting RFC 1209 usage over SMDS. This documentation does not need to be presented to the IESG in a formal letter. To make the gathering of information easier, the IESG agreed that specific customers and sites do not need to be disclosed. The general question of verifying the accuracy of the information was not discussed. Based on Piscitello's observations, the IESG approved RFC1209 for Draft Standard. The IESG still expects a report by email from George Clapp before sending the recommendation to the IAB. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Craft a message to the IAB recommending RFC 1209 be elevated to Draft Standard Status. Send the message after the IESG receives a report on operational experience from George Clapp. 3.2 822 Message Header Extensions Two issues in the Message Header Extensions document were raised and discussed. There is a small difference in the "Q" encoding of the Message Headers and the "Quoted Printable" encoding in MIME. Because these two documents are expected to be implemented in the same software, there was a feeling that it would be better to use the same encoding. The encodings differ in their treatment of the space character, a special character in RFC 822 headers. The Working Group chair responded that the differences in the encodings were necessary to achieve the intended effect of having the most "reader friendly" representation possible. The underscore character is used represent a space in the header, and a space is left as itself in the body. The IESG was satisfied with this explanation. The second issue discussed concerned the operational implications of changing the header specifications. It was pointed out the changing the interpretation of the comment and quoted-string in the header will generally result in a change to the header parsing algorithms in user agents. Because of the complexity of these parsers, and the traditionally bad conformance to RFC 822, there was a question about whether this change to allow multi-character sets in the headers was worth the potential harm to the mail reading infrastructure. This protocol may prompt modifications to software that performs addressing parsing, including that done by mail relays, and may affect their operation. The IESG agreed that the risks of this change were acceptable to satisfy the needs for multi-lingual users of RFC 822 mail. The Message Headers document is one of two documents defining the new multi-media/ multi-lingual standards for RFC 822 email. No action is necessary until MIME is approved. 3.3 Frame Relay MIB (Chuck Davin) LAST CALL: 2/11/92 The Frame Relay MIB Last Call was issued. In response to the last call, comments were sent, and a new version of the document was published as an Internet Draft. Recognizing that updates to documents that occur very late in the process could be at odds with their forward progress in an open way (or at best very confusing to the community), the IESG concluded that greater care is warranted in handling late-stage documents. POSITION: After a Last Call is issued, no further versions of the Internet Draft should be posted unless the Area Director specifically requests such a posting. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Send a message to the IETF updating the last call to reflect the current document. 3.5 Mapping between X.400(1988) / ISO 10021 and RFC 822 The IESG discussed the current situation with this document. This document has caused the IAB and IESG to clarify and revisit the requirements for a standards track protocol not originating in the IETF. This specific document has followed the understood practice, and was reviewed at an IETF plenary meeting at a one-shot BOF. ACTION: Gross: Bring this up to the IAB and seek clarification of the specific procedural objections. If resolution is not possible, schedule a meeting at the IETF of the relevant IAB, IESG, and Working Group members to achieve resolution. 3.6 IP Type of Service The IP Type of service document was sent to the IAB. Discussion subsequently ensued on the IETF mailing list. The IESG discussed and affirmed the decision to recommend TOS for Proposed Standard Status. ACTION: Almquist -- Send a note to the IAB, and or the IETF, acknowledging the discussion and affirming the IESG position that the TOS document should be advanced per the IESG recommendation. ACTION: Gross -- Add TOS to the IAB agenda and relay to the IAB the sense of the IESG in regards to TOS. 4) RFC Editor Actions 4.1 Hybrid NETBIOS End-Nodes Dave Borman reviewed the NETBIOS document. The document intends to define a new standard end-node beyond the three defined in RFC 1002. The extensions outlined in general seems reasonable, however, the intent of the author is not clear. If this is to be an experimental document, publication is reasonable. If this is intended to be a Standard, the author needs to bring the document into the IETF. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Contact the author of the NETBIOS End-Nodes document, and find out if it is intended to be an experiment or standards track. 4.2 DCNL to Experimental The RFC Editor forwarded the IESG the Dynamic Creation of Network Links document for review. This document is an independent submission to the RFC editor, even though it was reviewed at an IETF BOF. There are no plans to submit this document to the standards track at this time. If experiments are encouraging, this may serve as a starting place for standards track work. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Notify Jon Postel that the IESG has no objection to the publication of the DCNL document as an Experimental RFC. 5) Technical Management Issues 5.1 Interoperability testing at IETF meetings. The IETF Secretariat has received requests to support interoperability testing and functional demonstrations at IETF meetings. While the IESG believes that non-partisan interoperability testing represents one of the biggest strengths of the Internet Community, it believes that the IETF itself should not be the explicit sponsor of such events. To do so probably goes beyond the original charter of the IETF. Plus, there is the legitimate concern that the IETF Secretariat does not have the resources to support this type of additional activity. POSITION: Demonstrations and interoperability testing cannot be considered part of the IETF meeting itself, although there is no reason why the results cannot be shared with the relevent WGs, if approporiate. The IETF Secretariat does not have the resources to assist in planning such activites and therefore any such demos or tests have to organized and implemented by those performing the activity or function. 5.2 RFC 931 User Authentication Protocol Because Steve Crocker was unable to attend, this topic was skipped. 5.3 Report from the ROAD Group At its last meeting, the ROAD group has reached a set of recommendations. These recommendations are grouped in terms of a near term and a long term approach. The short term will address the immediate threat of Class B address exhaustion and routing table overload. The thinking regarding a longer-term scheme is still preliminary. Two approaches focus on using CLNP and address translation, and IP encapsulation. The ROAD group is expected to publish a paper and make a presentation before the San Diego IETF meeting. One possible approach is to spin up two Working Groups, one on each of the two aspects of the solution. The IESG voiced several concerns. The process by which the ROAD group reached its conclusions was a closed one, and it is important to give the ideas developed a through public hearing, and actively solicit comments. To facilitate openness while moving quickly, the IESG suggested that the ROAD group document as thoroughly as possible the options discussed, and the specific reasons they were rejected. By having this document, many questions can be deferred from the meetings themselves. ACTION: Gross -- Take sense of the IESG discussion to the ROAD group and to Peter Ford, the other co-chair of the ROAD group, and encourage them to consider to consider the requirements for openness in the IETF process and the need for timeliness in writing the report from the ROAD group. 5.9 IP over FDDI Noel Chiappa conversed with Dave Katz, the chairman of the IP over FDDI working group. They agreed that the specification has several editorial changes that would be helpful, as well as a specific technical change to the protocol to reflect current usage. The IESG discussed whether it was necessary to write a new document, and after discussion, agreed that a new document should be written before elevation to Draft Standard Status. ACTION: Vaudreuil, Chiappa -- Gather and forward to Dave Katz a list of changes for the IP over FDDI document. 5.10 Network Database The Network Database working group appears to be moving forward in a direction without much community support. The IESG discussed the relative merits of the working group, but was unable to determine the degree of community support. There is no active liaison with the major database vendors, and no liaison with Sqlaccess, a major industry group defining common networking protocols for database use. ACTION: Russ Hobby -- Communicate with SQLAccess and get a current reading on their work and the manner in which the IETF should liaise if at all. 7) Working Group Actions 7.1 Audio/Video Teleconferencing (avt) The IESG has not received a revised charter. No discussion was necessary. 7.2 SNMP over Multi-Protocol Internet (mpsnmp) A new working group in the OSI Integration Area was proposed. This working group is tasked to complete and standardize a suite of protocols for SNMP over FOO. SNMP was designed to run over UDP, however UDP is not available in all networking environments. This working group is considered reasonable by the SNMP community. ACTION: Vaudreuil -- Announce the SNMP over Multi-Protocol Internet Working Group as soon a complete charter is available. 8.0 Agenda Items Deferred 3.4 X.400 88=>84 Downgrading 5.4 IANA and the Class "B" allocation strategy 5.5 Internet Draft Format Requirements "Deplorable Documents" (PG) 5.6 Email Host Requirements (Dave Crocker) 5.7 Working Group Early Warning System (Dave Crocker) 5.8 Report of the Ad Hoc meeting on DNS Security (Steve Crocker) 6.0 Technical Evolution Appendix A Review of the Action Items (257) [Noel Chiappa, Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Dec 12 Contact George Clapp to document operational experience of the IP over SMDS protocol. Concluded. (278) [Steve Coya, Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 If Huizer and Piscitello can make thedate, schedule a 1 hour teleconference January 13th from 12PM to 1PM EST. Concluded. (258) [Dave Crocker] Assigned: Dec 12 Schedule a User Friendly Naming teleconference to determine the correct course of action for the UFN document. Concluded. (245) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Dec 05 Craft and send a notification to the RFC Editor to publish the Internet Draft "A Catalog of Available X.500 Implementations" as an FYI RFC. Concluded. The notification was sent December 13th. (246) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Dec 05 Craft, and hold a recommendation to publish the IP forwarding MIB document as a proposed standard. Concluded. The recommendation was sent 01/22/1992. (254) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Dec 12 Craft a recommendation to elevate the SIP MIB to Proposed Standard. Concluded. The recommendation was send 02/10/92. (279) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 After approval from the Internet Area Directors, craft and send a recommendation to the IAB to publish the TOS document as a Proposed Standard. Concluded. the recommendation was sent 2/10/92. (280) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Craft and send a recommendation to the IAB recommending the "IP Forwarding Table MIB" be published as a Proposed Standard RFC. Include in the recommendation a note indicating the dependency on the TOS document. Concluded. The recommendation was sent 01/22/1992. (281) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Send a message to George Clapp reminding him that the IESG needs information on the extent of operational deployment before it can move IP over SMDS to Draft Standard. Concluded. This is a duplicate action. (285) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Reschedule the RFC-Headers discussion for the February 20th Teleconference. Concluded. (287) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Send a recommendation to the IAB that the Internet Drafts "Definitions of Managed Objects for Character Stream Devices", "Definitions of Managed Objects for Parallel-printer-like Hardware Devices", and "Definitions of Managed Objects for RS-232-like Hardware Devices" be published as Proposed Standard RFC's. Concluded. The action was sent 2/10/92. (292) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Drop the TCP-Extensions document from the Active que of the IESG. Concluded. No action required. (294) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Send a note to Steve Casner reminding him that the IESG cannot approve his proposed working group until an acceptable charter has been filed with the IESG. Concluded. Casner has been reminded. (295) [Greg Vaudreuil] Assigned: Feb 06 Announce the Token Ring Monitoring Working Group to the IETF mailing list. Concluded. The working group was announced 2/10/92